Poems eBook

Did the wee white rose ever think of her lonely life,
That there were none to care if she tried
to grow;
None to care if the cloud that hung in the west
Should burst, and scatter her pale leaves
far and low?
Did she ever wish that the heavy cloud would fall
And hide her, so unblest, from the sight of all?

One sky bends o’er rich garden flowers, and
those
That dwell in barren soil, untended and
unblest;
And I think that God was pleased with the small white
rose,
That tried so patiently to live and do
its best;
That bravely kept its small leaves pure and fair
On the waste of dreary sand, and the desert air.

OUR BIRD.

She lay asleep, and her face shone white
As under a snowy veil,
And the waxen hands clasped on her breast
Were full of snowdrops pale;
But a holy calm touched the baby lips,
The brow, and the sleeping eyes,
The look of an angel pitying us
From the peace of Paradise.

And now though she lies ’neath the coffin-lid,
We cannot think her dead;
But we think of her as of some delicate bird
To a milder country fled.
’Twas a long, dark flight for our gentle dove,
Our bird so tender and fair;
But we know she has reached the summer land
And folded her white wings there.

THE TIME THAT IS TO BE.

I am thinking of fern forests that once did towering
stand,
Crowning all the barren mountains, shading all the
dreary land.

Oh, the dreadful, quiet brooding, the solitude sublime,
That reigned like shadowy spectres o’er the
third
great
day of time.

In long, low lines the tideless seas on dull gray
shores did break,
No song of bird, no gleam of wing, o’er wood
or reedy lake—­

No flowers perfumed the pulseless air, no stars, no
moon, no sun
To tell in silver language, night was past, or day
was done.

Only silence rising with the ghostly morning’s
misty light,
Silence, silence, settling down upon the moonless,
starless night.

And the ferns, and giant mosses, noiseless sentinels
did stand,
Looking o’er the tideless ocean, watching o’er
the dreary land.

Ferns gave place to glowing olives, and clusters dropping
wine,
Mosses changed to oaken tissues, and cleft to fragrant
pine.

Deft and noiseless fingers toiled, and wrought the
great
Creator’s
plan,
Through countless ages moulding earth for the abode
of man.

Till each imperial day was bound by sunset’s
crimson bars,
The purple columns of the night crowned with the shining
stars.

The ripe fruit seeks the sunlight through all the
clustering leaves
The earth is decked with golden maize, and costly
yellow sheaves.

Countless silent centuries passed in fashioning good
that
doth appear,
Shall we weary and grow hopeless, waiting for the
Golden Year?